Sandra L. Wong

TL;DR: SLN biopsies alone is associated with significantly less morbidity compared with SLN biopsy plus CLND, and there were no deaths associated with either procedure.

TL;DR: This analysis was performed to determine the frequency with which these less radioactive lymph nodes contain metastatic disease when the most radioactive, or “hottest,” node does not.

TL;DR: Surgeons should perform at least 20 SLN cases with acceptable results before abandoning routine axillary dissection, and this study provides a model for surgeon training and experience that may be applicable to the implementation of other new surgical technologies.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors found that the ability to identify multiple sentinel nodes, when they exist, improves the diagnostic accuracy of sentinel lymph node biopsy, and that the use of radioactive colloid in combination with blue dye improves the ability of identifying multiple nodes compared with using blue dye alone.

TL;DR: Routine preoperative lymphoscintigraphy is not necessary for the identification of axillary SLNs in breast cancer, and there was no statistically significant difference in the SLN identification rate, false-negative rate, or number of SLNs removed when a preoperativeymphoscintigram was obtained.